I’ve decided to publish some excerpts from a book I’ve been working on for some time now. The premise of Virtual Life revolves around a society living in a computer-generated reality that it’s totally unaware of. Our protagonist is Random Jung (pronounced like ‘young’), a private investigator living in this ersatz world.

Oh! They already did that with “The Matrix,” you say. The Matrix, released in 1999 was a revolutionary movie that dealt with nearly the same proposition.

I guess I could be accused of plagiarism if I hadn’t begun Virtual Life in 1995! I took a creative writing class on AOL Online about that time where I put forth my idea to the class. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the Wachowski brothers was in that class as well. Maybe they’re plagiarizing me, eh?

I was dumbfounded when The Matrix came out. Here was my idea, fleshed out with big $$$ and raking in even more! A number of elements from my story can be found in The Matrix. Who was reading my mind?

To be fair to the Wachowskis, the idea is hardly original as a wide range of virtual reality stories have cropped up in the SF lexicon over the years. The “holodeck” on the Enterprise is a handy example.

If the Wachowski brothers, by some strange serendipity had actually stolen my idea, they totally missed the point of what I was doing.

I had the rather grandiose idea, and effrontery, to create a new literary genre. Fantasy and Science Fiction have definite, unspoken for the most part, “rules” that determine their classification.

Science Fiction relies on the application of scientific fact. According to the purists the more hard science in a fictional story the better. Stories range from space opera and what’s called “soft” science fiction (very little fact) to the lofty heights of “hard” science fiction, where technicality is backed up with real scientific fact.

Fantasy, on the other hand, deals with “magic” and such. Spells, incantations, amulets and charms all can be brought into play to create events that are impossible in the real world. However, such things must be consistent, applying to everyone and everything in the story. Otherwise the “fictional dream” breaks down.

Note: We all know what Arthur C. Clarke said about technology and magic, right?

The border between SF and Fantasy is rarely crossed and, if I’m not too far off the beam here, is jealously guarded by authors on both sides who continually take pot shots at each other with good-natured humor (mostly) or not.

Virtual Life is an effort to combine the two genres into one.

Aside from my literary approach the objective of Virtual Life was to provide a vehicle for some of my short stories along the lines of Bradbury’s “Illustrated Man.”

The sub-pages of this page will contain excerpts of Virtual Life. Have a read and let me know what you think! Enjoy.   😆